


Passed down like folk songs, the love lasts so long

by donttouchtheneednoggle



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Bittersweet, Canon Compliant, Canon Era, Canonical Character Death, Childhood Friends, Gen, No Dialogue, Post-Canon, Pre-Canon, what these kids are doing playing unsupervised in bandit infested woods I have no clue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-31
Updated: 2020-12-31
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:40:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,094
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28463265
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/donttouchtheneednoggle/pseuds/donttouchtheneednoggle
Summary: Even back then, the Lake of Avalon was said to be haunted, and most people avoided it at all costs.Most people.
Relationships: Elyan & Gwaine (Merlin), Elyan & Gwen (Merlin), Elyan & Leon (Merlin), Elyan/Percival (Merlin), Gwen & Elyan & Leon (Merlin), Gwen & Leon (Merlin), Gwen & Merlin (Merlin)
Comments: 11
Kudos: 23





	Passed down like folk songs, the love lasts so long

Once upon a time there lived a blacksmith and his wife, named Tom and Martha.

They had two beautiful children, a girl and a boy, and when Gwen and Elyan were young they befriended the son of the nobleman whose house Martha worked at.

Gwen was stubborn and curious and the leader of their little band. Elyan was dreamy and adventurous, and Leon was a worrier.

Leon was the eldest, and the tallest, and would one day be a knight, but he was perfectly happy following Gwen. He would’ve followed her to the ends of the earth.

Elyan was the youngest, and the shortest, and would one day be a blacksmith, but he was never perfectly happy.

Gwen was in the middle and could never be a knight or a blacksmith. But she was the leader, and the big sister, so she tried to be content with what she had, and always smiled and never complained.

Even back then, the Lake of Avalon was said to be haunted, and most people avoided it at all costs. But the intrepid leader of their gang proclaimed they feared no ghosts, and so they went there one day, armed to the teeth.

Gwen had the wooden sword their father had made her, Leon had the small knife he had been given for his eighth birthday, and Elyan had only a stick.

Far from the dark and eerie place they had heard tell of, they found a place of dappled sunlight and nodding bluebells. From that day on, the lakeside was theirs.

They splashed and laughed in the lake, they lay drying in the sun and cloud gazed, and they went home every night with their pockets jumping with frogs and flowers in their hair.

Gwen always braided Leon’s hair, and Leon and Elyan would squabble over who got to braid Gwen’s. Elyan would get sulky because his hair wasn’t long enough to braid, until Gwen laid a crown of flowers on his head with a kiss on his nose that made him giggle.

There were numerous swings dotted thought the woods, made with rope, but Gwen and Elyan were not blacksmith's children for nothing.

On Elyan’s sixth birthday they got up early and walked to the lake, Gwen and Leon carrying a long length of chain between them. Elyan followed them, staggering under the weight of the polished wooden board his parent had bought from the carpenter.

They spent all day rigging the swing from a sturdy tree that stood right by the lakeside. It was too big for two and far too big for one, so all three of them squeezed onto it side by side, giggling their heads off.

For years the lake was their safe haven, to laugh and talk and play, happy and free.

Then.

Then Leon began his training to be a knight. Then Gwen became the Lady Morgana’s maidservant. Then Martha died and Elyan ran.

He ran so far away.

That he would never come back again.

Ever.

All those long years he was gone, the other two only went back once.

The day after Tom was murdered, Sir Leon found his way on instinct to the lakeside. Sat down on the swing beside a weeping Gwen and let her cry all the tears she had kept hidden into his shoulder.

By the time Elyan came back, he was no longer the shortest, and the three of them couldn’t fit on the swing any more. Not that they ever tried. The past was gone where they could never again find it.

But Gwen and Elyan would go walking by the lakeside sometimes, talking carefully, hopefully, and slowly they grew back together again.

One day Elyan and Leon passed it while on patrol . They said nothing but they glanced at each other and smiled, and the frosty resentment between them began to melt.

One day Merlin was pale and drawn and hunched with grief, starting at every sound, dark shadows threatening to engulf his eyes. Gwen took him by the hand and sat next to him on the swing, and they spoke quietly of the most honourable of them all.

The swing was where Elyan first kissed Percival, after those terrible days of ghosts and cold. He was warm and safe and tasted like honeysuckle and sunshine.

It took him a long time to let Gwaine in, but one day after the long imprisonment Elyan saw him going to the tavern when it was scarcely past noon. He grabbed his hand and sat beside him on the swing with his head on his shoulder until Gwaine couldn’t take it anymore and cracked a joke and Elyan shoved him and Gwaine shoved him back and they fell in the lake shrieking and laughing like idiots.

Then.

Then Elyan went back to the lake for the last time.

And Leon stood there on the bank and hurt more than he’d thought it possible to hurt.

And the Queen stood there and felt absolutely nothing.

And nobody noticed.

One day, a month, after Gwen found Percival sitting there, tears sliding silently down his face and they sat and wept together.

One day Gwen found Gwaine sitting there with sad eyes and he pressed a kiss to the top of her head, and they sat in silence.

Then.

Time moved, and found Leon and Percival sitting side by side: the last of the round table; the last of the golden dream.

Gwen and Merlin would sit there often, leaning into one another, holding between them all that was left of the golden king.

Many years later Gwen and Leon still went there on warm days, to the place of dappled sunlight and nodding bluebells, the memories of laughter and frogs and Elyan’s bright flashing grin still potent in that place.

Even as their hair turned silver and the decades scored lines on their faces, they still remembered.

Then.

Then.

Then years and years and years passed, and the chain of the swing stayed bright and did not rust. The wood never rotted. The rumours of ghosts at the lake only grew, and no one ever went there.

The lakeside would seem unchanged to the little band, all except the young man sitting on the swing, staring out at the lake.

To them he would be almost unrecognisable. His dark curls that fell nearly to his shoulders, his strange clothes, the ink creeping up his neck and down his arms, the aching centuries in his eyes.

That swing always had been far too big for just one.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments and kudos appreciated <3
> 
> Come hang out on [tumblr](https://donttouchtheneednoggle.tumblr.com/)!


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